From everyone’s feedback on the day, the Kingpin Greasing – MGB Technical Event early in September was a success. I’d like to thank Steve Bowra, Ken Burke, Dick Manning and John Roach to who I’m very grateful for opening the Clubrooms, and cooking the BBQ, and getting axle stands underneath the cars for me. As well as me getting “down & dirty”, I spent 4½ hours getting up and down, below both sides of the front of each car, and getting dirty up to my elbows with old and new grease from each car, I also gained something from the event.

When I was going through a quick, front-end mechanical inspection of all of the MGBs with their owners, it was a great experience for me to grab a front wheel, with the car jacked up off the ground, and to swing the front wheels from left full-lock to right full-lock and back again. It was brilliant for me to be able to mentally register the effort required to make this manoeuvre on so many MGBs in such a short period of time.

What surprised me the most, was how much variation in effort was needed to physically push the steering from lock to lock amongst each of the MGBs. Many were free moving while others had degrees of stiffness and there were MGBs with steering which was very difficult to move at all by hand and others which swung freely part of the way but I could feel resistance in the same place as I swung the wheels to full-lock. So thank you to those attending for giving me the opportunity to compare the steering effort on so many MGBs back-to-back. I’ve since been told by some that they noticed on their drive home that the cornering in their MGB noticeably felt lighter and smoother at the steering wheel, which is good for them and good for me to hear.  Read the full report here